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News & Press Releases

The New York Civil Liberties Union released an analysis today of New York City school safety data showing that, although schools are safer and fewer students are being arrested, more must be done to eliminate severe racial disparities and to limit NYPD involvement in school discipline. The NYCLU’s analysis of NYPD data from the first half of 2016 shows that 90.9 percent of arrests were of Black or Latino students.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced a list of proposals following the rise in hate crimes in New York since the last presidential election. His proposals included expanding New York’s Human Rights Law to protect children in public and private schools, and creating a “public-private legal defense fund” to provide immigrants with legal assistance who cannot afford it.
The following statement is attributable to Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union:

The New York Civil Liberties Union’s election protection initiative today will include running an Election Day hotline in highly contested counties in Western New York that voters can call if they encounter intimidation and other problems at the polls. The NYCLU also partnered with Common Cause New York to conduct poll monitor trainings across the state, and recruited volunteers and members to monitor polls in Monroe, Nassau and Suffolk. The NYCLU’s main office will also be taking calls from voters statewide who encounter barriers at the polls.

A Manhattan Supreme Court Justice today will hear arguments in a case in which the corrections officers union’s is seeking to remove decades of Rikers Island guards’ disciplinary records from public view. The case is one of several recent efforts to misuse the decades-old Civil Rights Law Section 50-a to hide misconduct by police and corrections officers in New York City.

The New York City Department of Education today released school suspension data for the full 2015-16 year. The numbers show that, while suspensions continue to decline, severe racial disparities persist, especially between Black and white students.

In a legal challenge to the NYPD’s surveillance of American Muslims, a federal judge issued a ruling calling for alterations to a landmark lawsuit settlement as a condition of approving the settlement. The alterations proposed by the judge would further strengthen the settlement’s ability to protect New York Muslims and others from discriminatory and unjustified surveillance.

The New York State Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the New York Farm Bureau can intervene as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Workers’ Center of Central New York, the Worker Justice Center of New York and farmworker Crispin Hernandez. The lawsuit, the first of its kind in New York, challenges a Jim Crow-era state law that unconstitutionally denies farmworkers the right to organize without fear of retaliation.

The New York Civil Liberties Union and the Public Science Project today launched a major two-week research and outreach project in two New York City neighborhoods disproportionately targeted by the NYPD. The action includes a first-of-its-kind survey asking Brownsville and South Bronx residents how NYPD policing impacts them and whether they trust police with their safety. It also connects residents to lawyers and community organizers armed with rights and legal information.

An NYPD sergeant yesterday shot and killed an emotionally disturbed 66-year-old Black woman named Deborah Danner who was undressed and alone in her Bronx apartment. According to the NYPD, after officers entered Ms. Danner’s apartment, she raised a baseball bat in attempt to strike the Sergeant Hugh Barry, who was carrying both a gun and a Taser. In response he shot her with his gun twice. According to reports, this was not Ms. Danner’s first interaction with police, who were aware of her mental illness.

Mayor de Blasio’s administration today outlined a list of principles for legislation that would make disciplinary records of law enforcement officers subject to disclosure. His announcement came in response to the fact that, after decades of releasing disciplinary decisions of officers, the NYPD recently began claiming that Civil Rights Law Section 50-a allows it to keep those records secret. Section 50-a, enacted in 1976, prevents public release of officer personnel records.